October 20, 2020

Research Update: Disfluency Characteristics of 4- and 5-Year-Old Children Who Stutter and Their Relationship to Stuttering Persistence and Recovery

33 minutes

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Dr. Bridget Walsh joins Sara MacIntyre, M.A., CCC-SLP to discuss recent research related to documenting and better understanding disfluency behaviors expressed by 4- and 5- year-old children who stutter and to identify whether stuttering characteristics at this age are predictive of later stuttering recovery or persistence. Dr. Walsh discusses potential future areas of research and, in general, her hopes for how learning more about the characteristics of disfluency patterns in this age group may be able to impact our work clinically in the future.

Link to study in JSLHR
Link to participate in Dr. Walsh’s current study

Bio: Dr. Bridget Walsh is a certified speech-language pathologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at Michigan State University. She directs the Developmental Speech Laboratory in the Communication Arts and Sciences building. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology and Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience from Purdue University. Translating thoughts into spoken words is a seemingly effortless ability, one easily taken for granted, yet speech production is a fascinating and remarkably complex process. Dr. Walsh's research focuses on the mechanisms underlying the development of stuttering in young children. She uses a multilevel approach combining neuroimaging, articulatory kinematics, autonomic nervous system recordings, and behavioral approaches to assess how stuttering emerges in young children, and to answer critical questions about why many young children recover from early stuttering while others persist and develop a lifelong chronic condition.

For feedback/ episode suggestions, email Sara: [email protected]

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